


The Mangoes and Limes Job

by Mizzy



Category: Leverage
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Community: thebigbangjob, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-09
Updated: 2012-04-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 08:57:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizzy/pseuds/Mizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, Hardison plans a perfect date, and it's interrupted by a heist. Of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mangoes and Limes Job

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 Leverage Reverse Bang. Art by Sunspot can be found [here.](http://sunspot.dreamwidth.org/28887.html)
> 
> This fic is basically an adaptation of the song "It Had To Be You" by Motion City Soundtrack. At first I intended the "fight crimes with mangoes and limes" to be a Donkey Kong reference (because what's more up Hardison's alley than some Nintendo in a fic) but for once my esoteric brain wanted to go literal. <3
> 
> Thanks to ella_bell for the beta. :)

[ ](http://sunspot.dreamwidth.org/28887.html)

  
  
  
  


So, Hardison plans a perfect date, and it's interrupted by a heist.

_Of course_.

He could have rolled with it pretty well, apart from the part where Parker's trapped in a hotel with no CCTV, surrounded by a too-eager SWAT team, and being held hostage by crazy people with guns.

A brick sails out of the window with a list of demands from the hostage takers, and Hardison's stomach lurches painfully: if they don't fulfil those demands in two hours, then the bad guys are going to start shooting hostages.

And they might start with Parker.

 

 

 

 

_**TWO HOURS EARLIER**_

  
  
If Hardison were to pick a top one hundred list of things for Parker to say to him on a date, "It's _definitely_ a lot smaller than I thought it would be" is not exactly anywhere on that list.  
  
It might even score into his "top ten worst things for Parker to say."  
  
Well, maybe if it was any of his body parts involved. As it is, Parker's probably directing it at the miniature Taj Mahal gracing the hill of hole fourteen. Probably. Maybe. _Hopefully_.  
  
As usual, Hardison has to pause for a moment to consider if she's being genuine or not. If the guys in his WOW guild are any kind of indicator, most geeks of the male persuasion did have to spend a certain amount of time - should one score a date in the first place - deciphering the language of their female companion. Hardison's 95% sure that it's just because they're socially inept. Not because they're dating the personality equivalent of Windows XP.  
  
Uh, probably dating.  
  
Maybe dating.  
  
 _Hopefully_ dating.  
  
Hardison hopes she's talking about the miniature Taj Mahal and not little Hardison, otherwise his trivia burst is going to sound completely bizarre, even by Parker-standards. "The Mughal emperor Shah Jahan built it in the 1600's in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal. A lot of people think it's a palace, but it's a tomb."  
  
Parker turns her head then, looking at him instead of her sandwich. That's a pretty decent accomplishment as it is—it takes a lot to tear Parker from her favourite food. The rest of the team think the way to Parker's heart, if you travelled via her stomach, would be nothing but cereal, cereal-covered donuts and fortune cookies, but Hardison's figured out some extra stomach-routes: graham crackers with raspberry jelly, nachos and ketchup, or butter and honey sandwiches.  
  
He's opted for the latter this time.  
  
"I like that," Parker says. She does like the creepier facts. It's why Hardison's been trawling wikipedia and reddit and occasionally - when the sleep deprivation hits a fever pitch - 4chan's paranormal board /x/ looking for those rare real-life moments of creepy violence with appeal to Parker's personality. "If I die before you, I want a giant bunny. No, a Glenn-Rieder money chest. No- I've got it. The Antiquity Collection at the Pergamon."  
  
"All of it?"  
  
"All of it. The gate, the altar, the security guard's bay by the nook of the third door, _really_ hard to spot, by the way."  
  
"Parker-"  
  
"You're right." Parker swallows the last part of her sandwich, and picks up her club again. "It's unlikely I'll die first. Even though I'm older, your digestive system has been worn down by a decade of soda abuse."  
  
"Excuse me? Because Lucky Charms have done your inner organs a galaxy of good-"  
  
Parker looks at him flatly. "My stomach-lining destroying colourings come in more than one shade. Unlike you, I eat my greens."  
  
"The point is conceded."  
  
Parker lines up her shot. The whole mini golf course is made up of various wonders of the world, and this one is a shoddy looking version of Stonehenge.  
  
Hardison's been to the real one, in one of his few trips to the UK. After realizing the security wouldn't let anyone near the stones during the day, Hardison pretended to listen to the black box the woman handed him at the entrance which was a weird audio tour, except his got stuck on German. So he counted all the security features (poor), sneaked onto the site in the early morning because it was slow tourist season and no dawn tours were available, and spent a disappointed ten minutes pushing the stones. His conspiracy-enthusiastic heart sank a little that there were no alien spacecraft hidden on the site. It was just a round circle of stones.  
  
"When I die, burn me," Hardison says, watching Parker smack her ball into one of the plastic stones. Fakehenge wobbles a little and Parker's ball bounces back halfway up the plastic green strip. "Make sure I'm dead first. Scatter my ashes somewhere nice."  
  
"I never thought of you as the cremation type," Parker says as she moves to take her next hit. "More the sent into space in a rocket type. Or buried in a family mausoleum."  
  
Parker's busy squinting at the hole and its tiny little red flag. It's easier for Hardison to be truthful about the current topic if she's not looking at him. "Burial and I don't go together so well anymore."  
  
Her thin back goes still. When she turns her face, there's a worried tension to her mouth. It looks like guilt. "I'm sorry. I forgot."  
  
Hardison swallows down the childish impulse that still burns in the bottom of his stomach, that still laughs at him in the morning when he wakes up sweating and gasping at the memory of it, waking up in a small damn box with no oxygen and a ton of soil pushing him down into the ground, where he was left to die, and he was going to die, and-  
  
It's not Parker's fault. She saved him. "No problem, baby girl."  
  
She pulls a face at him. "How do you know all this stuff, anyway? Taj Mahal, etc. etc. I thought the history of things wasn't really your area."  
  
"Oh, 'cause it's not electrical I'm instantly not an expert," Hardison starts, but Parker snorts, and he stops pretending, because it's true. Hardison might have hacked history once but it's never going to be a comfort zone. "Google, woman. It's got everything a growing guy like yours truly needs to know."  
  
"Google," Parker says, rolling the sound out reflectively. "Sounds like an eye problem."  
  
"'s funny," Hardison says, as Parker hits the ball again and it sails right past the hole and bounces back to her feet, "I always thought abseiling was some sort of perverted bedroom activity-"  
  
"You always think _everything_ is some sort of perverted bedroom activity."  
  
"That was just once," Hardison defends, "and how was I supposed to know an Alpine Cock Ring was a climbing anchor for those rare times you are forced to _walk_ up mountains?"  
  
Parker arches an eyebrow at him. "Use your eye problem."  
  
"I _did_. Eventually. After I stopped being appalled at your dirty, dirty hobby."  
  
Parker inhales like she does when she's frustrated, and Hardison thinks it must be the mini-golf that's provoked this inhalation, because she hits the ball again and misses. "Are you _sure_ we can't use your magic balls?"  
  
"It's cheating," Hardison starts to explain, and then turns.  
  
There's a family waiting to use the Stonehenge part of the course. A family with two kids under the age of ten. A family where the mother is staring at them, horrified, and the dad is clamping his hands over as many ears as he can (and failing, because blocking only _one_ ear of each kid is not the best way forward.)  
  
"Awkward," Parker says, sounding pleased with herself for noticing that it is, actually, an awkward situation.  
  
Hardison blanches. "It's a remote controlled golf ball," he calls out to them, feeling a thousand times awkward. "Like a remote control car. You can just drive it into the hole." The kids look at the golf ball in his hand judgmentally. "This is just a regular ball! See, I'mma gonna prove it to you. Staring at other people playing mini golf, I don't even _know_ how you can justify it to yourself." His muttering trails off as he puts his ball at the starting spot and readies his club to hit it. "Here you go, genuine proof that it's a regular, normal ball-"  
  
He smacks the ball and it curls around and into the hole.  
  
"Huh," Hardison manages. Parker takes him by the arm and pulls him off the course.  
  
"It's all yours," Parker yells. Hardison grins his most shit-eating grin, and turns and runs with her, dodging past some other players and nearly knocking down a tiny version of the Easter Island heads.  
  
They drop to a walk three streets away. Hardison checks the contents of his backsack and pulls a face at the smashed remains of the picnic he packed. "Guess that idea was sort of a bust," he says, zipping it shut and slinging it over his shoulder again.  
  
"I was having fun," Parker says. "It's much more fun when we're the ones hitting things with sticks. If it's Eliot, he moves too fast. You can't see it. Blur and he's done." She bumps his shoulder, and says, low and warm in his ear, "Speed doesn't impress me."  
  
Hardison blinks because just for a minute she sounds like she's flirting with him, and Parker's not the most natural flirt in the world. He remembers sourly the time after Sophie had tried to teach Parker how to play footsie with someone. The bruise on his calf took five weeks to heal.  
  
"I'm going to miss Boston," Hardison says, as they idle down the sidewalk, because Parker never outright flirts with him if it's not a con, and he's not quite sure how else to respond. He wants her to think it can be something normal, so maybe she'll feel free to do it again later, in other normal situations. "Not that I haven't been getting restless to move. It doesn't feel right sitting still in one city for so long."  
  
"It's like... we're sitting ducks here," Parker says, nodding slowly. She's moving oddly, side to side. Stepping on every crack, the opposite of the game everyone else played as a kid. Hardison likes it. It's a metaphor for the way they're a step out from the rest of the world. They go where others fear to tread. It's a terribly melodramatic thought. Nate would love it, if he was there, but he's not. Hardison's made enough machinations on his own to make _sure_ he's on his own with Parker tonight. Sophie "mysteriously" got the main role in a production of _The Crucible_ (swearing _down_ she could still play a teenager), Nate's currently probably in the back row strangely delighted, and Eliot will be over on the other side of Boston, as far away from Sophie's dulcet acting tones as possible, using the excuse of Parker and Hardison skipping it to avoid Sophie's pouting that they're not all there in the back row. Like they usually do. Suffer together to make her happy. Eliot falls for that reasoning every time, so maybe Sophie's been using NLP on him again—regardless, Eliot's the one who locked up the earbuds. It's probably in fear that _hearing_ Sophie's bad mojo would be just as bad as seeing it—although his vocal reason, of course, is that Eliot would vomit if he had to hear Parker and Hardison's date.  
  
Hardison likes being without the earbuds. It leaves him free to spend a whole evening with Parker, heist-free, without anyone's voice in his ears but his own. And, hopefully, Parker's.  
  
Not that he doesn't have some vague law-circumventing back-up plans in the back of his mind for if Parker gets bored, of course. An off-the-cuff Grift is probably normal dating practice for master-criminals.  
  
"So what do you want to do now? And no setting fire to things," Hardison tags on quickly, even though he does have a lighter in his rucksack. He knows Parker well. It's his back-up plan. _Plan M,_ he thinks ruefully, thinking of the number of times he has accidentally set himself on fire.  
  
"You're such a spoilsport," Parker starts, "sometimes pyromania can be useful. You never know when you'll need a fire."  
  
Hardison's inhalation to try and contribute to the argument's swiftly curtailed by Mr. T pitying a fool, which he remembers a belated moment later is his cell phone's message alert tone.  
  
"I hate getting pity from a machine," Parker says a little sulkily, folding her arms and sagging against the nearest wall.  
  
"It's karma for all the time I spend pitying my netbooks," Hardison says, as he slips out his phone. It's not Nate, Eliot, or Sophie, so he's not rushing. Their alert tone is the TARDIS a-woosh-a-woosh. "The number of them that have been shot at, abandoned, lost in the Caribbean ocean-" He falters at the message on the screen, and Parker instantly straightens. They've known each other long enough to know that if Hardison stops speaking, it's something serious.  
  
"What is it?" Parker asks, low and hurried like someone might be watching them. In their line of business, it's not an unheard of occurrence.  
  
"It's Jack Hurley," Hardison says, re-reading the text as he speaks just to double check he's not misreading it. He looks up at Parker, and the lightness between them is gone, just like that. "Peggy's gone missing."

* * *

There's something about Jack Hurley that does strange things to Hardison's brain. Like someone's hacked his perception filters. He keeps forgetting just how _tall_ Hurley is.

Hardison thinks about it as they move to greet him. Hurley's standing in the narrow aisles of a professional hotel kitchen, the place he thought Peggy would be, which probably helps to make him look taller. His worried face is reflected several times in the stainless steel worktops and utensils. It's not just the location that makes Hurley look tall in real life.

It's something to do with his unassuming, casual attitude. Along with all the charming bluster and earnestness, he has such a big personality that it just seems... so much bigger than he is. Except Hardison's memory of Hurley's big personality fades with time, and the memory of Hurley's size along with it.

Hardison is forcibly reminded of Hurley's true size when he catches him up in an almost-suffocating bear hug. His knee bangs into one of the industrial-sized ovens.

"Man, I am so glad you were nearby, I'm so sorry about interrupting your date," Hurley effuses, dropping Hardison and turning towards Parker, his arms still stretched out wide. He freezes. Tilts his head. "Um, Hardison, I love you man, but you said you were dating a chick named Parker. _Her name is Rose,_ " he adds, in a comically loud stage-whisper.

Hurley's an earnest guy. He's looking at Hardison with a pretty serious expression, like Hardison's honestly forgotten the name of his date.

"Do you tell a lot of people that we're dating?" Parker asks Hardison, sounding halfway between bored and impatient. She bobs on the balls of her feet awkwardly and looks across at a set of shiny kitchen knives set in a stainless steel block. Hardison does his too-many-teeth-showing grin.

"No, of course I don't," Hardison says, immediately. And then tries his best not to wince, because Parker's very good at taking what you've said in the wrong way, and... he's probably just walked straight into one of her humdingers. He thinks she does it deliberately, to keep them all on their toes. He sort of likes it.

Hardison will never admit that out loud.

"So you're _ashamed_ that you're dating me," Parker throws out, narrowing her eyes and folding her arms.

Arms that Hardison knows all too well can effortlessly throw around crowbars like they're fortune cookies, so he swallows down the fact that he told Hurley he was on a date _while she was standing right next to him_ and he ignores the fact that she doesn't care and is maybe messing with him, and tries to save his bacon by one of his number one skills outside of hacking: talking really, really fast. "I'm not ashamed of you, hell, I would get a banner the size of the Empire State Building and hang it... on the Empire State Building with a picture of you and I and maybe some glitter and some big gooey hearts, I ain't scared of my masculinity, it could be pink and red and I'd stand by with pride that I made this for my woman, y'all, and-"

"-and then we could set it on fire," Parker says, unfolding her arms and clapping her hands together in glee.

"Yeah, we could set the banner on fire," Hardison says, "some kerosene, some fireworks, whatever you want, baby girl."

"The banner," Parker says, "that's what I meant." She does that creepy grin that means she was clearly thinking of burning the building down.

"Now, Rose, replacing your kleptomania with pyromania's not the best coping strategy," Hurley says. "Remember what that doc with the expensive boots said while we were in rehab."

"That was Sophie," Parker explains to Hardison.

"I was on that con too," Hardison says.

Parker makes a scoffing sound. "Ha, on the outside. You don't know what it was like in there! Horrible, horrible place. Everyone was so _happy._ Creepy. Creepy and unnatural!"

"Hurley," Hardison says, slow and long, "this here is Parker. She's the world's best thief, and she is—like me—one of the team. Her name isn't Rose, she was just _pretending_ to be called Rose for the sake of the heist."

"Oh," Hurley says. " _Oh_."

"So I'm Parker who is sometimes Rose, mostly just Parker," Parker explains.

"Right. Parker Rose, it's nice to meet you?" Hurley says, with a squint, and holds out his hand to shake hers.

Parker casually extends her hand, and squeezes her ever-present taser with her other hand. Hurley eyeballs the blue spark and wisely does not try to hug her. Parker beams and punches him in the arm companionably. Hurley rubs his arm. "Hell of a punch you've got there, Parker Rose," Hurley mutters, and then he freezes. "Hey, where's the rest of the gang?"

He sounds and looks completely crestfallen.

"I'm offended," Parker says, blunt and outright, eyeballing Hurley. Hurley freezes, eyes sliding back to her taser. She grins so widely that she shows him her wisdom teeth. It's her predatory smile. The kind where she's happy about potential violence, fire and slash or mayhem. Hardison swallows the sigh he sort of wants to make.

"Hurley, you've got the best Hacker and Thief in the world standing in your kitchen," Hardison says, " _one_ of us could get Peggy back single-handedly. Wanting the whole team is just greedy. Now bring us up to speed, 'k?"

Hurley rambles through the facts while Parker starts prowling around the kitchen. It's a nice rig, all stainless steel and large ovens. Hardison takes in a few of the details even as Hurley explains—Peggy was busy tonight, but she never eats what she makes, so Hurley came by to surprise her with a picnic. Hardison thinks of his own smashed picnic, and then thinks about what it would have been like if Parker hadn't met him when she said she would, and a curl of panic slides uneasily in the pit of his stomach even imagining it. Some of that feeling must show on Hardison's face, because Hurley's eyes go suspiciously misty and he yanks Hardison into another slightly-moist bear hug. Hardison surreptitiously brushes at his now damp shoulder, and joins Parker in looking around the kitchen.

"No evidence of a struggle," Parker says. "The dishwashers empty and I can't find any evidence of used pots, but there's a half-empty pan cupboard over near the sinks."

"Are you totally sure she was going to be here? I mean, she had time to clean up before she went missing," Hardison says. He looks around the immaculate room before something catches his eye, a piece of paper pushed into where the orders normally hang. "Is this Peggy's handwriting?"

"I was trying to surprise her. This is where she said she was, earlier in the day." Hurley comes over and hovers over Hardison's shoulder. "Yeah, that's one of her invoices. Look at the sketch of Mr. Snuggles on the bottom right hand corner."

"24 dinners," Hardison reads from just above the badly penned outline of what's supposed to be a cat but sort of looks like a sack of potatoes with whiskers.

"I checked with the host of the dinner here," Hurley says. "Peggy wheeled out their food and when they came back in to thank her, she was gone. They were looking for her when I turned up."

"And there were 24 guests," Hardison says, wandering over to the bin, "none of them saw anything?"

"Not a single one," Hurley says. "I've got the contact details of the host if you need it."

"Might not be necessary," Hardison says, looking down at the contents of the bin. He hates his life furiously for a moment, and sticks his hand in to fish out a slightly crumpled piece of paper, and then looks down into the contents. "Here, have a look at this."

"Cool, garbage." Parker sticks her head nearly into the bin. Hurley blinks and looks at Hardison with a clear _and this is the best thief in the world?_ expression. Hardison just shrugs. A lot of people have that expression when encountering Parker. "I don't get it."

"Here," Hardison says, waving the paper at her.

"You fished that out of the bin? You're disgusting," Parker informs Hardison, wrinkling her nose.

Even though Parker's practically just stuck her whole head _in_ the bin, Hardison doesn't rise to the argument. He's starting to figure her out. Sometimes she just does the loopy things to put people off-kilter. She probably doesn't even realize she does it any more. Any good thief knows the psychology of stealing. Cause a distraction in one direction so you can steal from the other.

"You just have to read it," Hardison says, "not touch it. The key is the mango."

" _Mango Chicken Curry,_ " Parker reads. "What's a mango?"

"It's a type of fruit," Hurley explains, "tastes real good as a smoothie."

"Tastes real good as a _what_?" Parker says, face carefully blank.

Hurley's face falls.

"Anywho," Hardison says, drawing out the last syllable, "look again."

"Caipiroska," Hurley reads. "4 teaspoons sugar, 1 lime, 2 measures vodka- She didn't tell me she was making cocktails at work. Man, that's so thoughtful of her not to tell me. Over 2 years sober and counting, yeah."

"Below that," Hardison says, giving Hurley a high-five with his spare hand.

" _Mango Chicken Curry,_ " Parker reads out, " _feeds 24. 8 pounds of chicken, 3 red bell peppers, 8 mangoes_ -"

"Ohhh, I get it, I get it," Hurley says, excitedly. Hardison nods. "I don't get it," Hurley finishes, wrinkling his nose.

"And you were so _close_ ," Parker says commiseratively, patting his arm.

"Look in the garbage again," Hardison says, slow and patient.

"Chicken bones. Pepper bits. And what are those red and green thingies?" Parker asks.

"Ohhh, mango skins!" Hurley fishes one out excitedly. Parker backs up, flinching.

"It looks _dead_ ," Parker says.

"Well, you chop 'em up to look like a hedgehog and scoop 'em out, pretty sure it kills them if they're not dead by the time they fall from the tree," Hurley says while Parker nods like she's pleased at the idea that preparing a mango is some sort of fruit murder. "Or bush. Or. pit. Wherever mangoes grow."

"Trees," Hardison says. "And what can we deduce from the mango skins?"

"Oooh, the deduction game," Parker claps her hand. "I like this one. He thinks he's the black Sherlock Holmes," she confides to Hurley in a mock-whisper.

"Woman, I could be," Hardison tells her.

"Sure you could," Parker says, obviously mollifying him. "Same way as hobbits are tall, and Harry Potter was 25 when Hogwarts sent him his letter." She side-eyes Hurley. "He has these play fantasies he likes to rant about when he's coding."

"She destroys all of my dreams," Hardison adds, mournfully.

"Dude," Hurley says, "um, I don't know how to break it to you, but Harry Potter's not real. It's just a book. Some lady made it up."

Hardison sighs, "Thanks, Captain Obvious."

"Wait," Parker says, "Harry Potter's not real?"

"Can we get back to the case, please?" Hardison demands, because if he lets this get any further... Well, let's just say he still has a tiny scar from the incident in Wal-Mart when some idiot decided to try and tell Parker that pineapples did not grow under the sea.

He's still not sure whether she knows there's fruit in the centre and not a porous sponge.

"Sir, yes, Mr. Hardison, sir," Parker says, saluting and elbowing Hurley until he copies her.

"There's clearly more than 8 dead mangoes in the garbage," Hardison explains, rolling his eyes a little at them. Parker beams at him. "Maybe more like 32 at a guess. So what _can_ we deduce from that?"

"Peggy _really_ likes mangoes," Parker says.

"Maybe she snacks on them while she eats," Hurley tries. "I guess I'm too busy looking at her when she cooks. She does this little shimmy, it gets me kinda hot-"

" _Thank_ you, Hurley. But neither of you are thinking what I'm thinking," Hardison says.

"Um," Parker says, edging closer, "I don't think this is the time or place. Especially not with company."

Hardison resists the urge to epic facepalm. "Hurley, does Peggy ever cater for places which don't have a kitchen? Or maybe she hires the use of one to do two meals for budget's sake? Because as you can see from the notice on the wall over there... this place doesn't have an alcohol license."

"Sure," Hurley says, "she just uses the same kitchen sometimes and transports the food-" He stops halfway through what he's saying. "Oh. _Oh_."

"32 mangoes would make enough dinner for 75 guests," Parker realizes. "So she has enough curry left over for at least fifty-one more people."

"Does Peggy keep any kind of electronic diary?" Hardison asks, already sliding out one of his netbooks and starting to head out of the kitchen. Parker instantly moves with him.

The hotel across the street has decent wi-fi. He should be able to pick it up on the sidewalk. He curses himself for not bringing his usual kit with him. He would have brought it, on a date with anyone else. But this is Parker, and he doesn't have to show off in front of her.

Bringing his netbook, on the other hand, was automatic. Not having a computer with him is like going out with a missing limb.

"Sure, just on Google Calendar," Hurley says, hurrying after them.

Hardison grins. "Child's play."

He balances his netbook on a wheeled recycling bin out in the back alley of the hotel, and starts hacking into the hotel's wi-fi network.

"I tried to call her earlier. She didn't respond." Hurley paces back and forth in the small space.

"Pass me the number, I'll see if we can get a signal," Hardison says, sing-song. He doesn't mind showing off... in front of Hurley.

"It definitely connected and she always has it with her, _always_. Something's still wrong, I know it. I _know_ it."

"Relax, man," Hardison says, looking up from his netbook for a moment, his fingers still typing out the string of commands his programs needed to operate. "If she's in trouble, we'll find her. But not with her phone." He wrinkles his nose. "Her GPS is offline."

"Oh, god," Hurley moans, "oh _god._ "

"We're not out the game yet," Hardison mutters. "Ah, see here."

He points at the netbook screen. They crowd around to watch a calendar page load. "Cute wallpaper," Parker comments as Hardison squints to read the text over the obnoxiously cat-filled background.

"It's our cat _Muffins_. We decided to get a cat together. Although Muffins prefers Peggy to me. I don't blame Muffins. I prefer Peggy to me. She smells nicer for a start," Hurley says, "and-"

"And here's her schedule," Hardison says, extra-loudly to stop Hurley's waffling. "48 heads for a charity dinner at the Back Bay."

"There was a fire in their kitchen a few weeks back," Parker says. "Guess it makes sense they're pulling in outside caterers."

"Peggy does have a permit for that. That's three blocks from here," Hurley says, turning and running in the direction of the hotel.

"Always with all the running," Hardison moans, flipping the netbook shut and tucking it under his arm as they give chase.

"I thought you liked it," Parker says, "because it makes you feel like Doctor Who."

"The new one doesn't run so much," Hardison says, but he shuts up, because it's sort of true. He wonders if Parker would hit him if he referred to her as his companion, and then remembers he's showed her some _Firefly_ , so it's probably not the best term to use.

"I've worked this hotel before," Parker says, "it should be easy enough to get in through the back, there's a vent-"

Hardison slows down and stands next to Hurley on the street corner, lights flickering across his face. "-just a couple of feet behind the FBI and a sizeable number of police officers," Hardison finishes.

"Well, it's safe to say Peggy's probably in trouble," Parker says, tilting her head.

"Oh, god," Hurley says, looking absolutely stricken.

"Nah, we got this," Hardison says, dropping his rucksack from his shoulder and rummaging in a pocket at the bottom. He tosses something at Parker that she catches easily.

"You brought these on our date, but not the earbuds?" Parker asks.

"Uh, yeah. Thought we might have some fun with them. Do some spot checks on one or two of the banks in the area. Y'know. Pick up some souvenirs. Have fun _without_ Sophie's acting and Eliot's whining in our ears."

Parker grins at him and pockets her FBI ID ready to whip out when required. "That sounds like an amazing follow-up to mini golf and sandwiches."

"Hurley, just stay behind us, stay quiet, nod along, and don't blow our cover," Hardison says, then nods at Parker and they head across to the crowded crime scene

"This is really freaking me out," Hurley says. "Are you sure this is going to be okay?"

"We'll be fine," Hardison says, maybe lying a little. "Totally cool."

"You spoke too soon," Parker says, completely without tact, because Hurley loses all the colour in his face.

"Why?" Hardison starts to ask, but a strangled sound comes out instead.

"Exactly, I completely agree," Parker says, nodding.

"Special Agent Thomas! Special Agent Hagen!"

Hardison plasters a grin on his face as Agents Taggart and McSweeten of the FBI start heading over towards them. "Great," Hardison says, behind clenched teeth.

"Oh, man, am I glad to see you," Taggart says, "we could really do with some help on this one."

"Man, you have too many names, Parker Rose Hagen," Hurley says, and then frowns, thinking about what's going on. He blinks, and stares between Parker and Hardison. "Dudes, you two didn't tell me you were _FBI agents_. That's so awesome! I mean, I've seen you guys in action, but _FBI_ , yeah! Oh, man, Peggy's as good as safe in the hands of the FBI!"

"Did we just blow your cover?" Taggart says, blinking between them. "Man, I am _so_ sorry. Not too hot on this on-spec field work, y'know? We were pulling a nice long-term surveillance down near the docks and now wham, right in the action. Weird."

"I hear you," Parker says, in her solemn-FBI voice. "Hurley, you just stick with who you think we are. So

"Yeah. You're the great thief Parker and Thomas here's a computer-geek-hacker-type," Hurley says, waving his arms around. He finishes, and looks at Hardison, completely lost.

Hardison swings an arm around him. "Why don't you just go over there, find a seat, grab some coffee—we'll get all the hostages out before you know it."

"The great thief Parker," McSweeten says, as he leads them over to the vans. McSweeten looks over to where Hurley's dejectedly sitting on a bench, "The guy believes _that_ as a cover? I've read Parker's file. We had to get an insurance company to compile it for us, she's that hard to find. She's got a rep for pure insanity. Kudos for pulling that off."

"I try," Parker says. "The taser helps." She sparks her taser up.

"You're prettier than I imagined her, too," McSweeten says. "That guy's a real idiot for not noticing that."

"Ha!" Taggart booms. "I think it's hilarious he's bought _both_ of your covers. You two as a Thief and a Hacker. Yeah, I can totally see that."

"Oh, I don't know," McSweeten says, a little shyly, "I think Hagen would be a great Thief. I mean." A hint of faint colour appears on his face. "I think she'd be good at anything she set her mind to."

Parker beams, and shuffles over so she can shoulder-bump him. "Why, _thank_ you Agent McSweeten, that's so sweet!"

"Yeah," Hardison says, the remnants of his good mood dissolving, "you're a peach, Todd."

McSweeten beams like it's a genuine compliment and not ragingly jealous hatred, which does slightly cheer Hardison. Hopefully Parker goes for brains over things like random compliments.

Probably.

Hopefully.

_Maybe_.

Hardison tries his best not to grind his teeth, and follows McSweeten and Taggart over to where the action's going down.

* * *

Taggart stands before some pieces of paper taped to the side of his Plumber surveillance van to do the briefing. "Here's what we got so far: At least four guys in balaclavas carrying some sort of machine gun barged in to the hotel reception. They've locked down the elevators, trapping all the guests upstairs. They let out one pregnant woman to deliver us a message: There'll be a list of demands and if they don't get them all fulfilled within two hours of receiving the list, they'll start to kill their hostages."

He nods at McSweeten, who takes over. "As far as we can tell, there are 50 guests inside the main hall, plus maybe 6 wait staff and the caterer. We don't know how many hotel staff or guests might have wandered in. The suspects have locked down the hotel, including trapping the guests on the second floor up, although we can't stop any guest from using the emergency stairs, so there is an increasing pool of potential hostages."

"We got pulled off our surveillance down near the docks," Taggart says. "We're a little bit surprised at that considering you two are both in the vicinity—Thomas, your negotiating experience is a hundred times ours."

Hardison holds up his hands. "Look, we just got a notice to come, no further details. We're on a more... long-term thing, you get what I'm saying? Our current, um. _friend_ here, he's uh, you know, one of our sources. It's not too out-of-character that he's here but if some of my lingo sounds off-" Hardison lowers his voice. "'cause I don't want him to know how senior Hagen and I are, y'know?"

"Oh, of course," McSweeten says. "We understand completely."

Hardison tries his best not to look relieved, because swagger only goes so far when the FBI is involved. He looks up at the building, thinking. "We got the layout of the place yet?"

"We've got someone interviewing the pregnant woman, but she didn't see too much before she got bundled up and sent out," Taggart explains, "so we're getting hold of the blueprints as we speak from the City Hall."

"How about any off-duty staff?" Hardison suggests. "They could run us through the layout quicker."

"Excellent idea," Taggart says, like it's the most brilliant thing he's ever heard. It's a tone Hardison's heard quite a bit in his life. It's also a tone he'll never tire of. Taggart makes as if to move off towards the cops. Then he pauses. "Um, how do we find out who works there?"

Hardison resists the urge to roll his eyes. "Cops know the area better than us Quantico-graduates, huh? So let's see if any of them on duty know someone who works here."

"Great." Taggart takes the lead as if it's his own plan. Hardison's cool with that. Although if Bonanno's on duty, he's going to have to be ready to talk fast—Nate's already made his goodbyes. Bonanno thinks them already gone. They're just in Boston one more day now to tie off any loose ends and then that's it. Good-bye Boston, hello Portland.

Hardison withers a little inside at the thought. It's why he'd been trying to make this date a date to remember, and now they're pulling an impromptu con that's much bigger than anything Hardison would have planned. He wanted this to be a perfect date, a perfect last memory of Boston before the move.

He's only been to Oregon twice, and both those times were for work not sight-seeing, but his programming and fake forums and email IDs are still pulling in information about people to help, and it's a decent location to help them from. Maybe he'll just have to make a perfect date happen _there_. It's a nice idea. Make the new place more attractive, and keep Boston as the place weird dates happened and Portland the place for perfection.

One of the officers knows a worker at the hotel. Taggart gets the details and they call her, and Hardison leans against the nearest cop car and stares over at McSweeten and Parker as they wait. They two are looking over the plans, and at the hotel. The street's quiet for this time of day, so Hardison doesn't even have to use the lip-reading skills that Eliot's been slowing teaching him to eavesdrop.

"This is a terrible location for crime," Parker says, looking down the narrow streets and the tall buildings.

"I know," McSweeten says. "The take can't be very high. If I was a criminal, I'd probably hit up something more like the MFA. One Degas is worth more than my entire FBI career so far and to come, my training costs included."

Hardison folds his arms and tries not to look like he's listening, even though the curl of jealousy is like fire up his spine. It is jealousy. He's not too much of a coward to deny it. McSweeten has a weird chemistry and connection with Parker, something even Hardison doesn't have, and it's... irksome, is what it is.

"Degas paintings are hard to shift at the moment," Parker says, "you want one of their Monets. They have more and are easier to shift in South America. Uh. So our research says."

"I get it. When I go undercover, my persona spills out a little too," McSweeten says. He shuffles. "That Hurley guy, he really thinks you're a thief, right?"

Parker glances over to where Hurley's sat on the other side of the street, nursing a coffee and staring blankly at the hotel. His fingers are crushing the full cup. The fear on his face is tangible to Parker, but that's because she knows he's thinking of Peggy. She wonders what he looks to McSweeten.

"He's so convinced," Parker says, with a straight face. " _Ridiculously_ convinced. Hell, if you talk to him, he even thinks I stole rehab a while back. Crazy fellow. Cuckoo." She loops her fingers around her ears a few times to emphasise.

"Stole rehab," McSweeten repeats, and Hardison can see his shy smile from where he is. "That's. um. a pretty wild concept."

"What," Parker says immediately, "it can be done. Totally. Do I look like I couldn't steal rehab? Hmm?"

"No," McSweeten says automatically, flummoxed and back-pedalling hard, "you could steal rehab. You could steal whatever you wanted to. I'm sure you could."

"Damn straight," Parker says. "Now, where's this hostage. I'd like a word with her if that's okay."

McSweeten beams at being asked to show her the way. "She's over by the ambulances."

"Great."

Hardison tries his best not to grit his teeth as McSweeten puts his hand on the small of Parker's back, leading her over to the ambulance.

"You too, huh?" Taggart mutters. Hardison blinks, and turns to where Taggart has come to a still next to him. He hadn't realized he'd stopped to stare. He follows Taggart's gaze to McSweeten and Parker. Parker's now bending over the pregnant woman, her ear glued to the woman's belly. McSweeten's hovering by. Parker's not moving. Hardison fights his grin. "He's a good guy. It's easy to get swept up in his charm."

"He sure is charming," Hardison grumbles.

"But, as you can see, he likes the ladies," Taggart sighs. "Neither of us have a chance with him." He slaps Hardison on the back commiseratively.

Hardison jumps, stares down at Taggart, and fights the urge to react, because it's sort of handy if Taggart thinks they've bonded over something. And they are sort of bonding in hatred of the idea of McSweeten romancing Parker, even if it's not exactly the same form they're warm for. Hardison nods, and puts his fists out to bump with Taggart's.

"What's she doing, anyway?" Taggart says. Parker's still bent over the pregnant woman's belly, her ear still pressed uncomfortably close to where the baby's resting.

"Oh, we came across a fake hostage situation the other month," Hardison says, not even having to lie—just to omit the fact that they were the instigators of the situation. "Where they released a pregnant woman as a hostage, but the bump was a Mr. Mommy—a mechanical baby bump with a heartbeat and a fake clockwork foot kick, y'know? To fully simulate bearing a child? Hagen's just checking it's a real baby."

"A Mr. Mommy? A fake hostage? You guys really work the field," Taggart says, whistling through his teeth. "Makes it an honour to work alongside you, Thomas."

"You too," Hardison says. Taggart smiles, pleased, and Hardison ignores the faint curl of the lie running across his fingertips. He's been a liar all his life. It never gets easier.

The woman comes by, greets her boyfriend cop with a kiss, and starts excitedly telling them all about the layout of the first floor, and the staff who are likely on duty.

Parker's on his netbook by the time Taggart and Hardison wander back over from getting details of the layout. Hardison doesn't even have to check his backpack to know it's still zipped shut. Parker's an excellent thief. Hardison doesn't even know when she took it.

He looks over her shoulder. _Mango chicken curry_ is in the tab she's reading.

"You hungry?" McSweeten says. "I don't have a snack, but when this is over-"

"Thomas and I ate before we got here," Parker says. "But thanks anyway."

Hardison tries his best not to feel smug at McSweeten's slightly crestfallen expression.

"We've got a ton of information," Taggart says. "I've sent it back to HQ and they'll be sending us orders as soon as they've analyzed the situation. A SWAT team is already on their way."

"Automatic protocol for guns," McSweeten says, and then colors. "Sorry, I've been explaining FBI protocol since we got here to the guys." He nods at the cops behind them, who are standing around restlessly. "I keep forgetting you guys have had the same training we've had."

"It's fine," Hardison says, nodding. "It's a compliment. It means we're good at flying under the radar if even an agent as highly-competent as yourself can't immediately remember that we're agents too."

"I've been thinking about what we said earlier," Parker says to McSweeten. There's still pink on his cheeks. It darkens even more. Hardison dives for his pockets so no one can see he's balled his hand into a fist. "You were right."

"I was?"

"This is a terrible place for crime," Parker says. "It means whoever they've taken hostage, whatever they want—it has to be for a political or moral reason. It's not for money or goods, unless it's a specific item that only the hostages have. They wouldn't have risked such a stupid location if it wasn't important."

"It means even if we get a list of demands," Hardison says, "we probably won't be able to deliver. Not within two hours. Our only hope is to let the SWAT team do their thing."

"But without CCTV or an accurate count of the bad guys," Taggart says, "if the SWAT team moves in blindly, we'll lose civilians."

"So we need to get someone in," Parker says. "We need eyes in there."

"They let a hostage out once. But that was a hostage who hadn't seen the full situation. She was able to give us some names, which are being analysed right now, but it could be some time before that info comes back. They'll start shooting hostages _soon_."

"I can hack anything digital," Hardison says, "but there's very little chance of them letting anything digital come out of there before they're done."

"And they wouldn't send out anyone we sent in," McSweeten says. "We'd just be handing them extra leverage."

"Um, Thomas?" Taggart says. "Your cover vocabulary is leaking through. You're not a hacker."

Hardison makes his fake-solemn-FBI expression and lifts a fist to Taggart. "Keeping me on the straight and narrow, man. Appreciated." He fakes a sniffle and Taggart puffs his chest out, looking proud.

Parker snaps Hardison's netbook shut and turns to them, a spark in her eyes. She's thought of something good. "You can't hack digital. But you can hack a piece of paper."

"We thought of that," Taggart says. "Send in one of ours, put a code on the hostage's list of demands... But they'd see it. Anything that they didn't write, they'd see it. And if we send in anyone bugged, they'd be shot."

"And they might send out the list at any time, and our window's gone for using that," McSweeten adds. "So maybe our only hope is for headquarters to give us some useable information, or risk the SWAT teams barging in and a high body count."

"Is there any long-distance listening devices we can get a hold of?" Hardison asks. "We might not be able to hear clearly, but a _hint_ of voices could give us more of a clue of location of the hostages and the bad guys. And what about a sniper? There's plenty of rooms looking down on our location. We have no idea what they can see."

"The off-duty waitstaff we talked to think the hostages must be being held in the Argyle Suite. It's on the main floor, an interior ballroom. There's no windows into that room. They must have triggermen up on the higher floors facing out on us to have any validity to their threat."

Taggart sighs. "Seeing as they shot up one of the cop cars, we have to assume that, I think. The bullets came from several different directions," he says, "although that might mean they're communicating on a radio frequency we can listen in on?"

"Excellent," Hardison says, "I'm pretty good with radio. _Facilitating,_ not hacking." Taggart winks at him and mouths _good job_. "You've got the same equipment in the van as usual?"

"Yeah," McSweeten says, "nothing too special, just the usual rig. Nothing that could go that long distance without a bug."

"That's cool," Hardison says, "I might break a couple of things, but I've got some skills with stuff like that."

"You break it, you fill out the requisition order," Taggart says flatly, but hands Hardison the keys.

"Great," Hardison says, and turns to Parker, "why don't you-" He trails off.

McSweeten realizes almost at the same time Hardison does. "Um, where's Agent Hagen?"

"She's right-" Hardison starts, and his stomach plummets. He turns around just in time to see one of the windows on the ground floor clatter shut. McSweeten follows his gaze immediately. "There," Hardison finishes, lamely.

He thought his stomach had plummeted right to the ground, but it tightens, squeezing, bubbling, reminding him painfully that it still exists in the same place as ever. Hardison stares, his eyes hot and dry for a moment, and he swallows. When he looks to the side, McSweeten's expression briefly resembles everything Hardison's feeling.

Hardison might be jealous, but in this moment... They might be from entirely different worlds, but if nothing else, their fear for Parker's safety makes them equals.

 

#  
  
It's easier than it should be for Parker to slip into the hotel.  
  
There was a time four years ago that she would have considered doing something similar for completely opposite reasons.  
  
That part of her brain is still active, whirring in the back, plotting out a perfect plan. While the staff is busy with being taken hostage, certain things would probably be left unguarded. Like the manager's discretionary fund safe. Hotels like the Back Bay always held at least three hundred thousand dollars in cash for... unsavoury incidents.  
  
Sophie's told her before of how she used to make an easy million by finding a more reliable Grifter (not that Grifter really came in many varieties of reliable: before Sophie, Parker thought they only came in 'will stab you in the back' or 'will wait for you to turn around before stabbing you' varieties) and going half on a disturbance scam. The Grifter pretends to be a millionaire. Sophie pretends to be a hooker who's been attacked by them. The hotel manager pays her fifty thousand dollars to sign a document saying she'll not report it to the cops and bring the hotel's name into disrepute.  
  
Parker's held her tongue more than a thousand times, because it really is much easier just to set a fire in the lobby and then crack the safe. You don't risk getting stabbed and you take way more money. Hotel managers, usually desperate to keep their jobs, just explain the money away easily, as if a disturbance scam has taken place instead of a simple theft.  
  
Parker of the past would have climbed up one of the neighbouring buildings, grappled across, found an empty room, and either gone down the elevator shaft or maybe taken tools and cut downwards through the floor itself to get down a floor to avoid the guys on the emergency stairwell. Then she'd have grabbed the money from the safe, and gotten back out before anyone knew she was there.  
  
Crime scenes in progress were sometimes the best opportunities for theft you could get. It was like some of her best pickpocket techniques. Distraction. Make the eye go one way while your hands are going the other. Parker thought it was magic the first time Archie showed her. Then he showed her how, taking the magic away. And then she learned how to do it even better than he could, and learned that when others took magic away... sometimes she could bring it back.  
  
She still remembers the job where she was Nate's magician assistant fondly.  
  
Sophie's been teaching her about that. That sometimes when you learn a lesson, sometimes you get to practice it literally too, and vice versa. Her pickpocket hands move in the same way as a magician's hands do, only this way, working Nate's way, the magic she creates is better than what _real_ magic might do.  
  
Seeing the face of someone who they've helped, putting that emotion into their hearts and expression onto their faces...  
  
Parker's pretty sure of where the team's strengths lie. She can steal anything concrete, anything real. Hardison can steal ideas, and money that's not real, just numbers. Eliot steals your breath or your consciousness. Sophie steals your soul. Nate steals their desire to use these techniques for anything but good.  
  
Together, they steal from bad guys and give it to good guys. It doesn't mean they're good guys themselves. Parker likes to think of herself as... Well, it's just like with her pickpocketing. She used to provide a diversion, something to distract the mark while she stole from them. And now she _is_ a diversion—diverting success to its rightful owner.  
  
Although they're all picking up each other's skills, Parker's Grifting is shady at best. She can't pick and change identities as a whim, and needs to fall back on a handful of carefully crafted personas that are shallow and flimsy enough in a pinch without Sophie in her ear.  
  
She doesn't have anyone in her ear. She hadn't wanted anyone's voice in her head on this date with Hardison. Her own voice is confusing enough.  
  
So she has to go with a persona she's played before. One where she won't be seen as a threat to the hostage-takers. One where she can get close enough and be enough but not too much of an ass to get to be the one to make the list.  
  
Drunken socialite it is, then.  
  
It doesn't take long after Parker's stashed some hotel stationery up her shirt for a man with a balaclava and gun to find her. He barks something into his walkie-talkie, and another man shows up and manhandles her towards one of the larger halls.  
  
"Woah," Parker says, as the man pushes her roughly through one of the swinging double doors, "hands off the merchandise, buddy, I'm a Laughlin, of the Maysville Laughlins, don't you know what that means?"  
  
Her eyes scan the hall quickly. Ten guys in here. One up near a window with a rifle. The side of the building facing out on where Hardison was. Fifty-four hostages sat around tables. One guy clearly in charge. No balaclavas in here. There's definitely some sort of political or moral reason for this, then. Some other reason that wanting money. Parker swallows. Peggy's on a table near the guy in charge. She looks terrified. She's right to be. If the hostage takers don't expect to get out alive... Then they don't expect the hostages to live.  
  
"We got a new one," the man holding Parker says.  
  
"Well thank you Captain Obvious," Parker slurs, turning around and poking him in the chest. The guy yanks out his gun.  
  
"Gowen, no," the guy in charge barks. The guy—Gowen—narrows his eyes. Parker eyes him smugly. "Get her seated and go back to patrol. There could be more wandering tourists."  
  
Gowen mutters something.  
  
"You in charge of this shindig?" Parker says, whirling on her feet and spreading her arms and heading closer to him. She mentally clocks his appearance like he's a shopping list. American accent with faint Canadian twang. Dark eyes. Nearly six foot. Thick hair. Scar through left eyebrow. Distinctive scar of a bullet wound on his neck. "'cause I've got com- com- replaints? Yeah, some of those. I paid money. Real live money, fella and I'm not made of money, I'm made of fleshy blood stuff. Zombie food. That's me. So I paid money and I want it back, I don't want to have a gun pushed in my face, and-"  
  
"Shut up or I'll do more than point it in your face," the main guy says, cocking his gun and pointing it at her. Parker shuts up, stat. These guys know how to hold their guns. Obviously some sort of military background. Guys who were trained to hold guns knew you didn't point at something you weren't willing to shoot.  
  
It's why Parker had felt super jumbly seeing Nate point that gun at Dubenich. But he didn't really know the gun rule. Eliot did. It's why he broke them into pieces, flung them as far away as possible. Eliot knew the gun rule better than anyone, it was clear in his eyes.  
  
Pushing her luck, Parker does a self-indulgent, melodramatic twirl and manages to land in a seat just next to Peggy. She smiles widely at Peggy and doesn't wink, because Gowen is glowering over at her from the door, and Parker doesn't like provoking men who have guns too much.  
  
Especially in scenarios where she's had to leave her taser behind.  
  
Parker looks around, clocks the numbers and the layout of the room, mentally notes the best position for her and Peggy should wild shooting start (under the table, and then wait for a lull—there's a heavier banquet table they should be able to tip and hide behind if they have maybe 10 seconds of quieter gunfire.)  
  
While the main guy is distracted talking to one of the other guys, Parker slides out the hotel stationery, a small pad saying _Welcome to the Back Bay Hotel_ and looks around. Just like she suspected, the Caipiroska cocktails were for here. Peggy's mentioned before how she's been learning to make cocktails for her fancier catering contracts.  
  
Parker carefully starts sliding her hands over the tablecloth toward the nearest glass of _Caipiroska_. A lime, cut neatly into quarters, is exactly what she's looking for.  
  
"What are you doing?" Peggy hisses.  
  
Parker frowns at her. "Spy stuff," she murmurs, after a moment, and snags one of the glasses.  
  
Just in time for the main guy to turn around and glare at them, probably because Peggy spoke. Parker picks up the glass defiantly and takes a huge swig. The vodka burns down the back of her throat, but she just about manages to hold in the cough that her unprepared body wants to let escape.  
  
She's been pretending to be drunk, after all. Looking surprised at the burn of the vodka would raise the guy's suspicions. Parker thanks Hardison mentally again for the sandwiches. The butter should line her stomach, and stop the amount of alcohol she's mentally preparing herself to drink from affecting her mentally.  
  
The main guy looks across at his second-in-command and says something too quietly for any of them to here. But Eliot's been teaching Parker how to lip-read.  
  
 _Make that drunk blonde write the list of demands,_ he tells the other one. _Our fingerprints won't be on it and she's much too stupid to put any sort of secret message on._  
  
Parker hides her smile and looks up petulantly when the guy comes over and snatches one of the hotel pads from the table that Parker dropped. He eyeballs her suspiciously, flicking through the pads, and ripping out a random sheet that he lifts to the ceiling, squinting at it through the light, as if somehow Parker's written a secret message on it.  
  
It's blank. Of course it's blank. When Parker had access to the stationery, she didn't know the information she wants to smuggle out. The guy's a complete idiot for checking now.  
  
He doesn't sniff the paper. If Parker takes her time, this is going to work.  
  
No one expects a drunk person to write fast.  
  
"You write what I say," the guy says. His voice doesn't have the same accent as the guy in charge. This one's from somewhere Southern. Parker's not as good with accents as Sophie is. She makes a mental note to ask Sophie to teach her how to recognise them, and tries not to smile at the feeling she gets when thinking something like that.  
  
Having someone in her life that she can turn to on a moment's notice is still something that feels to Parker something like a miracle.  
  
"Write what I say and only what I say," the guy says again, and Parker squints and grabs for one of the pens.  
  
The guy snatches that from her and eyeballs it madly too.  
  
Parker does her best not to look smug. Bad guys didn't trust smug people. Smugness steps too far into the territory bad guys want as their own.  
  
She holds the smugness deep inside, instead. There's a lot of it to hold in. She's smug that she has an Eliot and a Hardison to learn from. She's smug that she's going to get out of here and get to go off with them, and not off to prison. She's smug that she knows a way to get a message outside without the bad guys noticing.  
  
The bad guy hands the pen back, and Parker holds her smugness deep, deep down. He's an idiot. Because, after all, it's not the pen she plans to hack.  
  


* * *

Jack Hurley wouldn't count himself as a clever man.

He thinks once upon a time he was, and maybe the alcohol drew it all away, like water spiralling down a drain. Sucked all the cleverness right out of his pores until all that was left was good will and a demon on his shoulder.

That's what all his AA programs since have told him. Alcohol wants him to screw up. Alcohol wants him to mess up everything good in his life, because then, if he hit rock bottom, he'd turn to alcohol as the last thing in his life. Alcohol wants Hurley to fall.

So Hurley's been doing his absolute best by Peggy. He's been treating her right. He's been going to AA. He's been trying to be as smart as he can be, considering he'd ruined most of his brains by years of alcohol abuse. He loved Peggy as much as he could, and always treated her like a lady, and she loved him too.

Sometimes it was a hard lesson that it didn't matter if you did your best, sometimes the world tried to take from you anyway, and it was how you coped with that afterwards which proved the kind of man you were.

Nathan Ford taught him that, if nothing else.

Still, Hurley's been working so hard at trying to roll with the theory that if you work hard and work as smart as you can, you get to know the good things that happen happen because of _you._ So it's really hard not to see this bad thing as his fault too.

Because bad things did sort of happen to him a lot.

It's thoughts like that which used to lead him to the bottom of a bottle.

Even now, his fingers itch to be holding a thick bottomed glass. So he goes for coffee instead. Cups and cups of it. Hot, strong and with enough sugar in to murder several small animals. Holding the coffee gives him something to do, and on the bonus side he can pretend he's a cop. Heh.

Hurley's so lost in his own thoughts he doesn't even notice that the precarious public bench he's perched on dips when someone sits next to him.

He only sees the FBI agent when he turns to pick up the extra pack of sugar he dropped earlier.

"Hi," Hurley says, because that's the kind of guy he is. "You're an FBI agent too, right?"

The FBI agent smiles somewhat ruefully. "You're not really supposed to know Hagen and Thomas are FBI."

"I won't tell anyone," Hurley says. He thinks about it. "I don't really have anyone to tell." He thinks about it some more. "The only person I have is in that hotel." The FBI agent's eyes widen. "The caterer," Hurley tags on, sadly, and the agent's eyes soften. "I'm Jack Hurley, by the way. There might be files on me, but I swear to the lord, it's all hyped up madness. I've only ever tried to do good—it's not my fault a nun used me to smuggle drugs over the border."

"Uhhhh," the agent says, making a sort of strangled noise. Hurley gets that a lot from authority figures. Peggy says it's because he over-shares, but one thing Hurley learned from rehab—from Rose and Tom's examples, actually—is that if you keep it all inside, like a bottle, at some point life will shake you so hard you just fizz over and you can't control it when that happens. "I'm Agent McSweeten. You can call me Todd."

"Hi, Todd," Hurley says, as brightly as he can manage. It's not his usual brand of brightness, but considering it feels like his heart has been taken hostage by a boa constrictor, he's sort of cool with the amount he manages. "I'm normally a much happier guy. But the idea of my Peggy in there, and all those guns..." He shudders like it's winter, even though Boston's been warm all day. Even though night's settling down, calm and deep blue around his shoulders, it's not bad.

Then again, Hurley's drunk enough hot coffee to heat a whole small shack, like the one he and Mr. Tacos shared for a few months while he sobered up. That's where he met Sister Lupe. Even though Hurley knows the hopefully-maybe-probably- _not_ -a-nun played him for a fool, Hurley hasn't even found it in him to regret his two years in the sun down there—until now. Those two years he spent four and a half thousand kilometres from where Peggy lived, and thus he wasted two years where he could have already found her.

Those twelve months, he could have been with Peggy. And now it feels like completely wasted time.

"I know how you feel," Agent McSweeten—Todd—says. Hurley looks at him, fully intending to disbelieve him, because how could anyone be feeling like he was feeling? Like he would rip his skin off with his hands if it meant getting Peggy back safe. Like he could throw himself in front of a thousand bullets if it meant saving her. Like he was the most useless person on the planet because he was stuck out there while she was in danger in there. He intends disbelief, but Todd says, with heartbreaking sincerity, "I've got someone in there too."

Todd's gaze is fixed solidly on the building. Hurley's giant heart leaps. In this, he has found someone who is twinning his emotions exactly.

He reaches out and pats Todd's shoulder commiseratively. Todd chokes a little, and sends him a watery smile.

Peggy always said he got a bit too enthusiastic with his sympathetic back pats.

Hurley swallows down a thousand feelings, and stares back at the building.

He feels like he's going to be waiting forever. And then the brick sails out of one of the small windows, and all hell breaks loose.

* * *

Convincing the FBI and their SWAT team that the brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it is, in fact, just a brick with a piece of paper wrapped around it is surprisingly difficult. Even with the knowledge firm in everyone's head that the bad guys are going to start shooting hostages if their demands aren't met within two hours.

Hardison, Taggart and McSweeten crowd around it as soon the good guys with the guns back off from it and declare it safe.

"As I suspected," Hardison says, pointing at the demands. "These are half impossible with the time limit."

"So it's someone in there that they want the convenient excuse of shooting," Taggart says, with a heavy sigh. "So they're likely to be the first target even if we go in blazing."

"Our best shot is to know what's going on in there," McSweeten says, and stares hard at the building. Like he could read Parker's mind if he stared long enough.

 _Keep trying,_ Hardison thinks. _Even with her there in front of you, and answering your questions, her mind is a jigsaw of the best kind. She's a hundred lost semi colons in code. I'll never know her 100%... but you won't ever get to know her even 1%._

_And nobody will ever know her if she doesn't come out of there._

_But that's not something I'm going to think about. That's what Agent McSweeten might be thinking about Agent Hagen. But it's not Hagen in there. It's Parker, and she can take care of herself._

He thinks of what was on his netbook internet history. He thinks of Caipiroska and the limes in them. He thinks of Parker saying, earlier, "sometimes pyromania can be useful. You never know when you'll need a fire."

He thinks of the lighter in his backpack.

Hardison smiles at them, slow and even, picks up the paper, and says, "We already know."

* * *

When the SWAT team moves in, Parker's prepared. She drops and rolls with Peggy, and it's all over in less than thirty seconds. The air tastes of fire and gunpowder, but all Parker can smell is the lime on her fingertips.

The lime juice she used to draw a diagram of the hall, and mark where the guys with guns were, and the victims. With the applied heat of the lighter, the carbon in the lime juice will have shown them the message.

From the fact only the gunmen are dead, Parker knows her message got through.

When Hardison follows through into the rubble, even though it's not fully cleared by the SWAT team, Parker doesn't care that anyone could be watching. She throws herself at him and he catches her, stumbling into the wall and laughing a little.

She straightens up and pulls back. "I used your eye problem to find out that the lime would do that," Parker tells him. She wonders for a second if someone normal would say _thank you_ or _I'm so glad to see you_ or _you make my chest feel funny in a good way_.

"I know," Hardison tells her. "And one day the message will get through to y'all that clearing your internet history doesn't mean nothin' to me."

She squints at him, but it's clear he knows—she meant him to look.

Parker wants to hold onto Hardison for a little longer. He doesn't look too opposed to the idea. But she has something to do first. She goes over to Peggy and extracts her from the rubble, guiding her outside to Hurley.

Outside in the bright light of multiple Boston streetlamps and the flashing lights of police cars and ambulances, Hurley staggers up from the bench and looks like maybe he got shot too. Except he's crying, so Parker worries that he's sad, until Peggy lets out a cry and buries herself in Hurley's chest, her fingers clenching, and sobbing about how happy she is and how scared she was.

"And it was Alice that saved me," Peggy says, when she finally pulls away. "Alice and all the SWAT team."

"Oh," Hurley says, "I'd like to meet Alice to say thank you, then."

"Sure," Peggy says, and points to Parker, "she's right there. Alice, I'd like you to meet my boyfriend, Jack Hurley."

"Uh," Hurley says and adds, tentatively, "Parker Alice-Rose Special Agent Hagen?"

Parker pats him on the shoulder. Hurley winces. Maybe she shouldn't pat so hard. "Close enough," she tells him.

"You know her?" Peggy asks, squinting at Hurley. "How do _you_ know a _spy_?"

"Ma'am," Agent McSweeten interrupts, "we don't use that word." He means that it's the CIA that are spies, but Peggy obviously interprets it as spy talk and she looks at him, suitably impressed.

"Agent McSweeten," Parker says. "A quick word?"

McSweeten nods, his cheeks going pink, and Parker takes him a short distance away.

"Agent Thomas doesn't look too happy at me monopolising your time," McSweeten says, almost jokily. "Taggart said something about him having a crush on you, but if you ask me, I think it's because Taggart's a little soft on Thomas. Don't tell Thomas I said so."

The idea burns Parker's stomach a little. The last time she felt this, she smashed a beer bottle in one hand. She doesn't have anything to smash right now. That's probably a good thing. She has the oddest sensation it might be Taggart's skull that she snaps between her fingertips. "Um. About Agent Thomas and me."

McSweeten looks instantly alarmed. "Are you okay?"

"Oh. Sure. It's just... we're getting transferred." Parker pulls a face.

McSweeten's face slackens, and his eyes go a bit moist, like Nate sometimes when they're on a con and someone is called Sam. "Where?" he asks, his tone low and serious.

"Protocol stipulates I can't tell you," Parker says, "You know that."

McSweeten swallows and smiles, but he looks sad. "Right. I'm sorry."

Parker wonders why he's apologising. Maybe in the FBI world, transfers meant a demotion. "It's okay," Parker says. "Thomas is pretty good at looking after me. Although... I think I spend longer looking after him."

"You could stay," McSweeten blurts. And then shuffles, looking embarrassed. "I mean. Your bureau work skills are highly transferable. I'm sure there are any number of places here in Boston that would hire you as a consultant."

It must be just the polite thing to say to someone who's moving, or something. Parker doesn't quite get all these social conventions. "Disneyland is nearby," Parker says. "Maybe," she amends, trying not to wince at the slip. "I'm sure there's lots of terrible crime happening there. You can't trust mice, y'know."

"Right. Right." McSweeten idles a little, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Well, maybe I'll see you there, sometime." He doesn't sound like he believes it, but... it sounds like he wants it.

Maybe too much.

Sophie's always telling her to put herself in someone else's shoes , and Parker always thinks well, Sophie's _really_ addicted to shoes so of course her advice would be something like that, but she wonders now if Sophie doesn't mean... pretending to be someone else. If she was McSweeten, in McSweeten's shoes, and Hardison was telling her _he_ was moving to Portland without her...

She thinks of the haiku. She thinks of the expression on McSweeten's face.

She thinks of all the things she could say that could hurt him less, but in the end... Maybes, hopefullys, probablys... They could hurt more in the long run.

"I don't think we'll see each other again," Parker says. She swallows down a weird lump that appears in her throat. "I wish you and Taggart all the best though." She reaches out, and pats his elbow—having learned her lesson, it's a ghost-soft gesture.

She doesn't know why she bothered holding back. His face looks like she hit him hard anyway.

Parker turns, and looks across to where Hardison is watching her, and thinks, soft but certain, and warm like the best kind of rush, that she's done the right thing letting McSweeten know they had no chance.

Because maybe it's time to let Hardison know for sure that they're not a maybe, or a hopefully, or a probably.

* * *

Parker's quiet when Hardison finally makes some techno-babble excuse for them to skedaddle. He spins it to Taggart that if he writes the report as if it's just him and Todd behind it all, well, a promotion is more likely.

McSweeten babbles something back about promotions meaning transfers to wherever they want. Hardison just smiles and nods, and backs out of there with Parker, Hurley and Peggy in tow.

They walk Hurley and Peggy back to Peggy's apartment, and then they make the slow walk back to the hotel suite Nate acquired for the team's last week in Boston.

"Man," Hardison says, "I won't have anyone tell me I don't take my women on interesting dates."

"Interesting use of the plural there," Parker says, shoulder-blocking him a little. Hardison takes it, winking at her.

"I'm just relieved you're okay," Hardison says. He looks straight ahead, unable to look her in the face as he admits, "My heart when I saw you go in there without a plan..."

"I knew what I was doing," Parker says. She pauses, and looks at him until he stops and turns to look at her. "I knew you'd get me out, whatever you had to do. And no one died."

"So I don't have to make that museum-replica mausoleum tonight," Hardison says. "Good to know." He nods and starts to walk again. Parker follows, like she's not entirely sure of herself.

"Earlier in our date," Parker says, a little rushed. "I didn't forget. About the burial."

Hardison swallows. His hands feel weird. He thinks about her body language when she said it before, her back straightening... He thought it looked like guilt. He thought it had been guilt for forgetting. Not guilt for bringing up a hurtful subject deliberately.

He must be shaking, because Parker wraps his hand in hers and forces him to pause. He looks down at her, unsure of what she's going to say, but letting her have the space to say it regardless. "I was just... checking."

"Checking?"

"Sometimes I wake up and remember it. Remembering _you_ , buried underground and you sounded so scared and you've always been strong for me. And I thought I'd lost you, so..." She trails off, and then looks up at him, hard. "If you're going to be with me, you're going to have to cope with this. That sometimes I push. Prod. Shake. Because sometimes, sometimes even when you're feeling bad with me, the point is..." Parker pulls back, and her eyes look a little red. "The point is you're _with_ me."

"I'm always with you," Hardison says.

She huffs, turns her face away a little. "Yeah," she says. "People always say that."

Hardison swallows. The tone in her voice is muffled pain, and Hardison's heart resonates with that so sharply he can almost taste it. He's hit with a desire that burns—a _need_ for her not to feel that, not to feel she has to sound like that. Not to have suffered so much in her past for it to be colouring her even now.

"Parker," he says, earnest, slow. "I don't care where I am. Whether I'm a step away or a million miles away or scattered across space in a burning goddamned rocket." He leans in and touches one finger to her temple. "Everything I've ever told you is in there. And everything I've ever felt for you-"He takes her hands, pushes them to his own chest. " _This_ always goes with you. Whenever. Forever. Close your eyes."

"What? No-"

" _Trust me_."

* * *

She does.

"Can you hear me?"

His voice is so close.

"Yes," she says.

"And now?"

"Fainter, but yes."

"And now?"

"Stronger. Yes."

"Are you sure?"

"You sound so far away. But... yes."

"Are you sure? Answer carefully. Yes? Probably? Maybe?"

" _Always_ ," Parker says, and means it. She opens her eyes, and Hardison is close to her.

"Always," he repeats.

Everything seems to make sense, all at once, all at the same time. Her universe is this small space of sidewalk, with Hardison's hand on hers, and his voice in her ear, so close she might remember it for forever and ever.

 _Oh._ "I believe you now," she says, and Hardison's smile is like the sun.

* * *

They get back to the hotel suite a little later. Nate and Sophie are bickering over a flyer from Sophie's play. There doesn't seem to be any heat in the argument. Eliot's polishing one of his swords in the corner. Parker goes straight to the small kitchenette and pours them both some cereal while Hardison turns on the TV.

"You two get up to anything nice?" Sophie asks, coming over and snatching some of Hardison's Fruit Loops. She knows like they all do not to steal anything from Parker's bowl. It doesn't matter if it was your cereal to begin with. Once it's in Parker's bowl, it's hers, full stop. Sophie leans back and eats it like popcorn. Hardison squints at her, but isn't properly peeved. He's too full of thoughts about Parker to find anything too annoying. The glow will fade, probably when Eliot opens his mouth and says something, but for now he's revelling in it.

"Oh, you know," Parker says. "Mini-golf. Sandwiches."

"We saw Hurley and Peggy," Hardison adds. "They say hi."

"Basically nothing," Parker says.

"Sounds enthralling," Eliot says. Hardison squints, his good mood already starting to evaporate.

The news comes on, blaring about the incident at the hotel.

"Aw," Sophie says, "damn. Hostages at a hotel are a perfect distraction to pulling a disturbance scam."

"You wouldn't even need the disturbance," Eliot says, philosophically.

Sophie and Eliot start to show-off about all the disturbance scams they've been part of, swapping horror tales. Sophie explains about a pair of shoes she broke once. Eliot explains how _he_ was once the hooker. On TV, footage of the SWAT team moving in on the hotel plays, along with a fuzzy image of McSweeten and Taggart.

"Sure," Nate says, leaning in close to Parker and Hardison, " _basically nothing_."

Parker smiles at him, winks at Hardison and agrees, "It was sort of everything."

And if Hardison were to pick a top one hundred list of things for Parker to say to him on a date, well... that's pretty much at the top of that list.


End file.
